Nightly trains of thought

My studio wasn’t even tidy yet after the latest exhibition of my work or my head had already started getting crammed with ideas. I let the wind blow some of them out of there at the beach last Sunday to create some space (the important ones always come back or don’t get blown out anyway!), but still, my head was too full to sleep. And so, in the darkest of hours, I sat down at my writing table, ballpoint and watercolours ready for the harvest..

Nightly train of thought…a collective emotion, a still from a movie that’s called Life – after the life stories of all those beautiful people I was offered in the past few weeks…

What comes out during such sketching and writing sprees is useful almost 100% of the time. For me those are always images that have been lingering in my mind for days…sometimes weeks. So when they come out, they’re solid. They’re a new painting waiting to be painted. As if it’s already there, just needing my hands to do the job.

It’s funny how at the art academy they said that the sheer knowing how you wanted to paint something was what made that such paintings would never be Art, “capital A”. If you could make them up before you painted them, why bother painting them? An image had to come to life during its creation and should never be an execution of a thought out plan.That was how THEY felt. I disagreed. And I argued. Some of my peers didn’t and worked out their plans without giving that process a voice. They got the better marks because of their “spontaneous” ingenuity! Hah! Call me stubborn, but I don’t see art that way. Or at least, in my view besides experimenting there can also be art that tells stories, art that touches. Some of us are simply made to tell stories. Writers, painters, movie makers, sculptors, singers. There is no ONE way to make art. Art comes in an unlimited amount of shapes, sizes and forms. So I am going to keep on being stubborn. And getting better at it as I go! Hah!